


A Small Collection of Thoughts on Three Topics

by hhopp



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Accepting Castiel, Accepting Dean Winchester, Agender Castiel (Supernatural), Angst, Bigender Castiel, Canon Divergence, Confused Dean, Crying, Crying Castiel, Crying Dean, Cuddling, Dysphoria, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, FTM Dean Winchester, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Identity, Gender Issues, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Transphobia, Misgendering, Other, Overcoming transphobia, Panic Attacks, Picnics, Transphobia, they/them pronouns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 09:21:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11917878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hhopp/pseuds/hhopp
Summary: That is to say, Dean Winchester, Castiel, and Gender.





	1. Chapter I: An Examination of Castiel’s Uncertainty Within the Modern World

**Author's Note:**

> When you start questioning your identity and start writing fics to work through your thoughts. It didn't work but what's the harm in posting it?
> 
> So yeah.
> 
> Chapter 1: Castiel is Uncertain  
> Chapter 2: Castiel is Bigender  
> Chapter 3: Dean is FTM  
> Chapter 4: Castiel is Agender

He ground his teeth together, dug his fingernails into his fist. 

 

Dean was snoring softly about a foot away, peace on his features. Cas looked over the high cheekbones, the gentle slope of his nose, his plush lips. There was a sort of… femininity to them. Cas trailed fingertips over his own face. It was everything he didn’t want it to be, blunt and masculine and anything but delicate, and there was a part of him that hated it. God, he wanted to scream. 

 

It hadn’t always been this way. He hadn’t always wanted to be… not a man. He didn’t know what he did want to be now, though, just that everything felt wrong— inside, outside, in the astral plane, whatever. 

 

Blood trickled down his wrist from little crescent moons on his palms. _Unclench._ He let out a shaky breath, released some of the tension in his jaw. When he rolled over to press his back (and his too broad shoulder blades, and his waist with no curve to it) against Dean’s front, he found himself trembling. 

 

“Babe, you okay?” Dean groaned, barely conscious; his voice was thick and sticky with sleep. Cas didn’t have an answer for him. “Cas?”

 

“No I’m not,” he whispered, choked. His boyfriend stiffened a little behind him, wakefulness taking hold. 

 

“What? Cas, what’s wrong? You’re not hurt, are you?”

 

“I don’t know. I don’t know… what’s wrong with me. I— Dean, help me.”

 

“Cas, you’re scaring me.” He was starting to sit up, pulling on Cas’ shoulder so they were face to face. Moonlight slipped through the blinds like a jewel thief, it glinted in green eyes which turned yellow and gold in its sparkle.

 

“Dean, I feel wrong. I’m not right. I can’t— I don’t know what I am.” His voice, it was so gravelly and deep. He buried his teeth in his tongue in an effort to keep more words from coming out coated in that _wrongness_. 

 

Dean clicked on the light. He kept a hand on Cas’ hip and rubbed jerky circles with his thumb over the skin there; Cas supposed it was meant to be comforting. “What—” he tried, “How do you mean?”

 

“I don’t fit. In my body, in my voice, in myself. It’s all wrong. I don’t want to look like this, I— I don’t— I don’t want to sound like this, or be like this, I need it to go away and start over and come back _right_ , I…” _Why couldn’t he breathe? Where was all the oxygen?_

 

“Cas, deep breaths. You’re okay, I’ve got you, it’s gonna be fine.” Ah, he was panicking. It wasn’t the first time his boyfriend had had to coax him back to rationality like this, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. They both knew this script like the backs of their hands. “Alright. Okay. Slow down a bit for me, man. What’d’you mean by this whole ‘I don’t fit’ thing?”

 

“I don’t…” _I don’t feel like a man_. There they were, the words he needed. He had them. They stuck to the back of his throat like they’d been pasted there. They clung to his uvula for dear life. He coughed and it rattled out more like a sob. “I’m something other. I’m other. I’m not a… Not a…”

 

“Not a what?” He was gentle, trying to be encouraging with a little squeeze to Cas’ (narrow) hipbone. Cas cleared his throat. He looked into Dean’s eyes, looked away from them. Clenched his own shut, shuddered, and gathered every molecule of courage within him to whisper,

 

“A man.”

 

The warm pressure of Dean’s palm on his hip evaporated; he did his best not to flinch at the loss. He refused to open his eyes, even when his entire body jolted when that same palm reappeared to gently cup his cheek. 

 

“C’mon, open your eyes for me, angel.” He shook his head. Dean’s warm, smooth thumb smudged a little curve back and forth over his cheekbone. A tear tracked down his face and got caught in the windshield wiper rhythm. “We’ll figure this out, okay? You’ll be fine. I’ll help you.” 

 

A bluish glow appeared somewhere in front of him and it startled him into opening his eyes. It was Dean’s phone screen. 

 

“Here, look. Google, you can never go wrong with a google search.”

 

“Put in ‘not a man, not a woman.’” 

 

Dean skimmed an article or two, read out quotes to him. He made sure to keep a hand attached to Cas at all times. “I’ll tell you what, babe, why don’t we go shopping tomorrow? Get you some… I dunno, some girl stuff, I guess. You can try it on and see if that helps you feel better?”

 

“I wish I knew how to make it feel right.” Dean nodded.

 

“Does this seem like a good first step?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Alright. Okay, we’ll do that, then. Take it slow, figure out what works and what doesn’t.” It was Cas’ turn to nod. “Did anything we found feel right? A label or something?”

 

The words took turns NASCAR racing in the space behind his eyes. _Gender Genderfluid Trans Trans-with-an-asterisk Gender Bigender Agender Gender Man Woman Genderqueer Masculine Feminine Gender Dysphoria Confusion Label Not-right Body Mind Clothing Gender Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong_. 

 

He buried his face in Dean’s neck and didn’t say a word. The windshield wiper hand gravitated to the bumps of his spine and travelled up and down and back again, Dean’s hum said he got the message, even if Cas himself (herself? Themselves?) didn’t know what that message was.

 

“Cas? You know… you know that dress or tie, guy or girl or neither or both or whatever, I’m not ever gonna stop loving you.”

 

The light disappeared. The covers came back up over the two of them. Dean’s hand kept rubbing up and down until long after Cas was asleep.


	2. Chapter II: An Examination of a Moment When Such Things Are Unimportant

They adjusted their binder and smiled. 

 

“Come on, are you sure? The water’s fine, Cas,” Dean coaxed. He held his arms out, beckoning, slashed his fingertips through the water for emphasis. 

 

They shrugged. “I’m good up here.” 

 

“Suit yourself.”

 

God, Cas could swear Dean was a dolphin once he got going in the water. It was entrancing to watch him slice through the silvery wetness of the lake, sending ripples and droplets of spray in all directions as if to inform his surroundings that he was present. They could spend days transfixed on the movements of his toned arms and runner’s legs in the water.

 

Sam ambled around the shore, tripping on his own gangly and growing legs, collecting rock after rock from between the reeds and weeds which surrounded the trio’s sanctuary swimming hole. Cas adjusted their towel on the pier again. Eventually, Dean grew bored with swimming and joined them.

 

From the picnic basket, he drew a pack of smokes. Cas hadn’t even realized he’d packed them until now, and they didn’t say a word until he’d set the end of one aglow with the tiny flame of his hand-me-down metal lighter his father had given him for his twelfth birthday. 

 

“Those are bad for your lungs, you know,” they commented as Dean exhaled his first puff of smoke. 

 

He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, as a rebuttal of sorts, “Cas, how long’ve you worn that thing today?”

 

“It doesn’t matter,” they grumbled. Dean breathed out another few mouthfuls, whitish grey wisps curling out of his mouth like the ghosts of flaming tongues. He was right, though, and they sighed. Told him as much. Dean didn’t grin triumphantly, though, the way he might’ve had Cas conceded on something like music tastes or the issue of a healthy number of burgers to consume in a week. 

 

No, instead he looked at Cas peculiarly, then stood up. “C’mon.”

 

He always kept a big hoodie in the car for moments like these. It was dark grey and smelled like him, and Cas loved to wear it because it was baggy enough to conceal their figure completely. It was only the femininity of their face and the daintiness of their hands which gave anything away, and those were easy enough to hide with the long sleeves and the hood. 

 

They climbed into the backseat to throw the hoodie on, then pulled a Houdini act to get out of the binder. They left it in the floorboard and took a deep breath of the cotton polyester blend— smoke and leather and spices. Rolled all together the smell was purely and simply Dean and they swore they could get drunk off that alone.

 

Dean laced his fingers through theirs when they got back out of the car. The two of them took their time walking back to the bank, breathing and stepping in time and listening to the sounds of wind, waves, and gulls. Sam was rifling through the basket, looking for the sandwich he’d packed, by the time they arrived. 

 

They all had a picnic in the sand, Cas’ head in Dean’s lap as they munched on their sandwich. Dean ran his fingers through their hair, absentmindedly humming music older than he was while staring out over the water at the gilded, blushing horizon. Today had been a good day. They and their boyfriend had taken time to simply… exist. Outside of the world. Outside of expectations and identities.

 

Here, on the edge of this argent little body of water, there was only Sam and Dean and Castiel. There was brotherly love and camaraderie and the forever they shared with the elder Winchester. There was breathing and pretty colors and idyll.

 

They liked the days like these.


	3. Chapter III: An Examination of Dean Winchester’s Atypical High School Experience

The mirror stared back. _He. Him. His. Hi, my name is Dean. My name is Dean. He, him, his. Dean. Dean. Guy._

 

_He_ winked at _his_ reflection. Smoothed his hands over his chest one more time to make sure everything felt flat. Shuffled his hair around.

 

“Deanna! Or— wait, I’m sorry! Dean, we’re going to be late!” Hearing his deadname still felt like a dull knife being crammed through the center of his heart, but he knew his mother didn’t do it on purpose. Hell, he still had to remind himself of his real name on a daily basis. 

 

“Coming,” he called down the stairs. He pressed the word from his (bound, _don’t worry, it looks flat_ ) chest and found a pleasant deepness there. Sam and Mary were waiting by the door for him, his antsy little brother bouncing up and down in anticipation. 

 

First day of school. New town, new people, new start. 

 

“You look really good, Dean. Basically like a real guy!” he chirped. Mary’s eyes went wide and she looked between her children like she wasn’t sure if something was going to blow up. 

 

“Thanks, Sammy,” Dean laughed. The kid’s intents were pure. He nodded almost imperceptibly at his mother and her shoulders inched down from the vicinity of her earlobes. 

 

“He’s right. The two of you both look very handsome.”

 

He met Castiel immediately, seeing as he was Dean’s assigned peer mentor. Really, that was a fancy way to say the school had a buddy system for the new kids, but Dean would take what he could get. Cas was awkward and he sometimes looked at Dean as if he could see straight through his vest and shirt and binder to his soul underneath— which was unnerving, to say the least— but Dean decided to label him ‘quirky’ and move on. They became fast friends.

 

Unfortunately, not everyone could be quite so easy to get along with. The jock types, carbon copies of the idiots from his old school, had the same habit of shoving him into bathroom stalls and classroom doors, taking his books and making him jump for them, putting notes in his locker. 

 

Today he’d found one that said “We all know what you really are. Quit pretending, little girl.” The world kind of faded away when he read it, the last few students entering their classrooms and the shrill ringing of the bell echoing emptily in his head. He didn’t know how much time had passed or how he’d ended up sat on the floor. Cas found him there, apparently, and tried to pry the paper from Dean’s fingers as he stared unseeingly toward the girl’s bathroom across the hall. He came back to himself when he realized he was being bodily hauled away to the one-stall disability bathroom beside the stairwell.

 

Cas locked the door and turned on the light. “Dean?”

 

He sighed. He didn’t want to have this conversation.

 

He didn’t always pass, he knew that. He had a girly face and skinny arms and curves and some days it was apparent. Gym class was hell for more than the normal reasons. It hadn’t taken long for a lot of people to find out he was different, but somehow it had slipped Cas’ notice. Or, he acted like it at least. 

 

“Dean, am I able to guess what they mean by this?”

 

He bit the inside of his cheek then nodded. “If your guess is that I’m trans, and a total idiot for thinking I could ever convince anyone I’m a real guy, then yeah.”

 

“Dean—”

 

“Nah, forget it, Cas. Why don’t you just call me Deanna? My dad does. Who do I think I’m kidding?”

 

“Dean, stop it,” Cas interrupted, “stop. Is there something else going on? Why are you acting like this?”

 

“What, you mean like a hormonal girl?”

 

“No, I don’t mean that, Dean, please don’t put words in my mouth. I’ve never heard you talk about yourself this way. Is there something happening beyond this note?”

 

Screw Cas. Screw the jocks. Screw the bloody, sticky diaper in his underwear and the way his binder was making his boobs sore today. He ignored him and marched over to the sink, wrenching on the cold tap. He splashed some over his face without waiting and was greeted with a handful of lukewarm water. Screw the way the temperature was the breaking point to release the floodgates in his stovetop hot eyes. 

 

“It’s just… me, man. Why did I have to be born like this? Why couldn’t I look like you, or like my little brother, or hell, Gordon? Why do I have to be me?”

 

“Because,” Cas said slowly, “because you _aren’t_ Gordon or Sam or me. You’re Dean, and this struggle is the short straw that Dean happened to draw. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t a real boy. You might not be Sam, but you’re still one of us.” A hand landed on Dean’s wrist, which was still braced against yellowed porcelain. Somehow, Cas had gotten ridiculously close during his little speech, and Dean jumped when he turned around. 

 

“You think so?” he asked, and flinched at the highness and smallness of his voice. The hand squeezed and Cas nodded. He turned off the tap. “Thanks, man. I’m— well, sorry I’m so overdramatic.”

 

“You just need somebody to put things back into perspective for you sometimes. No need to apologize.” A smile tugged at the corner of Dean’s mouth. He held out his arms.

 

“Bring it in, buddy.”


	4. Chapter IV: An Examination of What Happens When Some People Don’t Understand

“Cassie, what do you mean?”

 

“I mean I’m not Cassie anymore.” She bit her lip. Three months fallen and his angel was sitting before him, delicate hands tangled in raven locks and nervousness coloring her eyes. “I don’t think I ever was. I’m— angels aren’t… male or female.”

 

“Yeah, but babe—” He didn’t really want to say it, but she _wasn’t_ an angel anymore. She was just… a person. A woman. 

 

“I know, Dean. I took a female vessel when I came to earth because my superiors thought it would be the best way to convince you to say yes. Then, it appears, I formed a feminine identity in your mind. You call me Cassie and she and her, but… I’m not. I’m Castiel, Dean, I’m not Cassie.”

 

“Cass— Castiel, you can’t just decide not to be something someday. You’re a woman, now, not an angel. I don’t get how you can be anything else.” 

 

“I’m just not, Dean.”

 

“But you have to be!”

 

She tugged her bottom lip between her teeth again and bit it hard. Blood beaded up and she licked it away before murmuring, “I don’t. I’m not.”

 

“What, so you’re… like, you’re transgender or something? Like they talk about on the news?”

 

“Something like that.” 

 

He could work with this. Cassie, or… Cas. Cas, his boyfriend. He shivered a little at the implication, but he could get over it. He loved her— him. Or. “So you’re a guy, now. Alright, okay, so we can—”

 

“No.”

 

And hell, Castiel may not be an angel anymore but the sheer power in that one word could have knocked over a mountain. Dean choked. “What?”

 

“I’m not a man, either, Dean.” Steely blue eyes. 

 

“But you’ve got to be one or the other.” There was no other way, there couldn’t be. There were two neat little boxes, the guys on one side and girls on the other. They were level, or close to it at least, but still separate. Cassie/Cas/Castiel huffed and stood up. 

 

“I’m not, Dean.”

 

And then Dean was alone in the room. The ex-angel had probably joined Sam in the war room, maybe to complain about how much Dean sucked. 

 

No. No, this was a phase. Cassie was trying something out, just like she’d tried out the pink and flowers aesthetic last month, and being a chef two weeks before that. She’d get over it soon enough, he supposed. He might as well play along, Cassie was stubborn when she wanted to be so it was probably best to let her figure out on her own that all of this was nonsense. He stood up to follow her out of the kitchen. 

 

She wasn’t in the war room. Not the war room, or the library, or the bathroom or Dean’s room. 

 

It took half an hour, but eventually he found her curled up on the bed in the room she’d used for all of three days before moving into Dean’s room with him. Her shoulders were shaking but no sound escaped from her mouth, buried in a pillow. 

 

“Hey, babe.”

 

She startled but didn’t move. “What do you want, Dean?” she asked, her voice thick. “Are you hear to remind me I’m just a woman, again?”

 

The words should’ve been biting but rang out… empty. Damaged. Had he done that? Had Dean done that to her? To be fair, he’d done that and worse to her, to his brother, to anyone and everyone he was close to. But somehow this was different.

 

“I”m sorry,” he offered. He took a step towards the bed. “I’m sorry… you feel this way or that I don’t know how to deal with it or that I hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you.”

 

She sighed, then quietly answered, “I know.”

 

“And so, if you want to try this out… not being a dude or a chick, I’ll stand behind you, okay? It still doesn’t make sense to me, but it’s clearly important to you.”

 

She finally rolled over to face him, nodding. She took a moment to consider, then, “You can’t call me Cassie anymore.”

 

“Alright. I can do that.”

 

“And I’m not a ‘she’ or a ‘her.’” Dean didn’t say anything, and she— not-she— clarified, “I’m not entirely sure yet. I’m thinking ‘they.’”

 

“Okay.” He took the last remaining steps separating him from his partner and kissed their forehead before sitting on the edge of the bed. “Cas, I can’t promise I’m not gonna screw up sometimes.”

 

“I know, Dean.” They took a deep breath. “But I know you’re trying.”

 

“Yeah, I am.”

 

“Then that’s good enough for me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Have like five things that I've had done for a while now
> 
> I own nothing. Kudos, Comments, you know the drill if you've ever read an author's note before.


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